THE MIGHTY VALKYRIES #1 - Jason Aaron in His Element
This title was written by Jason Aaron and Torunn Gronbekk, with artwork by Mattia Iulis and Erica D'Urso.
There are simply just some writers that are more suited to certain characters than they are to others. For seven or eight years of his career with Marvel Comics, Jason Aaron was the main writer for the Thor/Might Thor title, putting in one of the most seminal runs in the history of that character, while also writing the likes of Wolverine and Punisher at some other points. It is safe to see that the majority of his Thor run will be remembered fondly by most fans (perhaps War of the Realms notwithstanding, even though it was fun, if a little long), with the things he introduced to that mythos likely to be mentioned in the same breath as Straczynski, Simonson, Lee and Kirby. On the other end of the scale, with things he is not suited to, would be this current run of his on the Avengers title. Now, that has been a tumultuous title for pretty much sixty years, but Aaron’s take on the classic team has to be one of the strangest of all time.
Here we are once again though, with Aaron writing for a character that he clearly has a great affinity with in Jane Foster. I will admit here that I didn’t exactly keep up with his work on the predecessor to this series, “Valkyrie: Jane Foster”, as it just always seemed to fall on a week when I had far too many other titles that I would prefer to buy, although everything that I saw from it was enjoyable, and was responsible for allowing me to see the tremendous artistic talents of Cafu for the very first time. this new book definitely comes across as a direct follow up to that series, that may or may not have been cancelled before it was really allowed to properly get going, due to some circumstances outside of the control of all involved. Here we are given Jason Aaron at his very best, along with the contributions of Torunn Gronbekk, to produce two stories that offer some intriguing looks into the lives of many characters from Marvel’s version of Norse mythology.
Our first tale, which takes up the majority of the thirty-three pages that have been allotted for this first instalment, should likely be considered the main focus of the series, with Jane Foster clearly established as our protagonist. Here, we learn that there have apparently been numerous reported attacks, by way of Doctor Strange, which our Valkyrie needs to investigate. Her first lead, wouldn’t you know, basically leads her straight to the culprit, as she meets Loki at a bar, who tells her about one of his grandchildren, called Managarmr. The abrupt nature of this reveal suggests to me that this is not going to be a particularly lengthy first arc, perhaps only going for a couple more issues, with the in between sections featuring the likes of Hela and Karnilla being the main thread that ties all of the other chapters of the story together. While I did find this to be a rather interesting story, I did feel that it was a little bit all over the place for my liking, with a whole lot of random stuff going on, some with little information behind them at all. With my complete lack of knowledge of the background goings on in Asgard and the other realms, I was completely unaware of the “marriage” between Hela and Karnilla, and it came as quite the shock to me personally, as I only just got past a point in the history of Marvel where Karnilla and Balder were a bit of an item, and that to be fair was in like the late-1980s or the early-1990s.
The second story featuring the newer Valkyrie was definately, in my opinion, the more interesting of the two stories, despite being vastly shorter than the one focusing on Jane and Loki. To be honest, I simply think that it was a little bit more coherently told, with something that actually felt as though it resembled a traditional “story”. The journey of Runa travelling to the planet and seeing this Oracle to “rediscover her name” just lent itself to this structure, as it had a clear beginning and middle, with a great cliffhanger at the very end, that built up intrigue ready for the release of the next instalment. The only knock that I would have on this secondary story, especially in comparison with the Jane-focused main story, would have to be the artwork of Erica D’Urso. Honestly though, if you have to compare most artwork to that of Mattia de Iulis, then it is likely to look terrible by comparison, as his style is simply just breathtakingly beautiful in every way.
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